It’s holidays time, and shopping becomes a household name. Most everyone is anxious to give in to their shopping desire and go buy-buy-buy. The retailers are well aware of this fact and some of them respond by jacking up their prices a few times over.

The keyword here is to stay calm and do some shopping around first. Doing this far in advance is even better which is what I’m going to illustrate below. Will be using mineral oil, of all things, as an example.

Granted, chances are highly unlikely that you’d give a bottle of THIS as a Christmas present but as I am doing this for myself and my cutting board, works just fine. So, I have decided to start off online and see what happens. I was astonished by the results; am still scooping my jaw from the floor.

Walmart sells a 16-ounce bottle of Swan brand mineral oil for under $5, and so does Ace Hardware, $5.99. Plus a few dollars of shipping if you want to enjoy this delivered to your door. Walmart also sells another brand, Equate, for the mere $2. That sounds very reasonable; I am sure my little cutting board will appreciate.

On the other hand, Amazon website plays hard to get as their prices for said mineral oil are close to $30. For a moment there, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But no. Here now, a 16-ounces bottle of Swan Mineral Oil goes for a whopping $23.52 plus $5 shipping; alternatively, $28.44 with free shipping. This yields roughly nearly $20 profit per bottle; sounds great for a seller but sucks for a buyer. $20 multiplied by an XXX number of sales, well you get the picture. I am pretty sure that Amazon is well aware of these tactics as the company gets a cut from the sale. A nice one, may I say.

However, if the online sellers can source their products from the brick-and-mortar prices, so can you. Off I’m going to Walmart.

Speaking of brick-and-mortar prices, on my last trip to a local Dollar Tree store, I had purchased a hair coloring kit that worked just the same as the overpriced one by a big brand name. A dollar price has likely paid off for my entire shopping there. This is what I’d call a Christmas present to my budget.

Christmas time isn’t exclusive to the price hikes; The Fiscal Times website reports Big Pharma raising their drug prices “by staggering amounts” and raking in billions in revenues at the expense of shocked consumers. Read about it here.

By the way, should you want to use mineral oil as laxative, I would suggest looking for the alternative as using mineral oil can wreak havoc on the vitamins content in your body. Try eating things like dry beans, corn on the cob and other products with high fiber content.

Dry beans is super easy to cook in your favorite crockpot. I usually pour hot water over my pinto beans, soak them for a couple of hours and then cook on high for about five hours more. Yum.